The behavior is not innate. For example, there is no criminal "by nature", it has been proven more than one century ago.

There is the concept of behavioral genetics and that the "range of reaction" from a personality/emotional standpoint and it is becoming more possible to genetically classify people as being pre-disposed to certain patterns of behaviors such as being a hot head, depression, lacking empathy, etc.

Statistically, you could probably then calculate various levels of associations between these behavior sets with different types of crimes (along with appropriate error bars and confidence intervals). So while there is no "murder gene" that can predict whether or not you will kill someone in your lifetime, you could get to a point where they could run a dna test on you and say "according to an aggregation of several factors in your genetic make up you are 23% more likely than someone in the general population to commit a violent offense.

There is a huge correlation between prisoners (people considered criminal) and these people having brain disorders. They are significantly (or should we say: extremely) over-represented. There is also a huge correlation between brain disorders and genes.

There is no absolute proof or direct causation, but genetics can indeed make you pre-disposed to crime.

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A statistical proof is not a formal proof, keep it in mind. As far as I know, genetic determinism in psychology is a controversial subject, there is no consensus about that.

When it comes to behavior and things of that sort, there is no such thing as "proof" only levels of association and/or causation. I don't think there is much controversy that there is a genetic component to behavior although there work ongoing work to determine the level of influence that genetics exerts on personality and to what extent it can be overcome via environmental factors.

I have abused of Minority Reports. Almost only American scientists make such claims nowadays. In Europe, Italian positivist criminologist Cesare Lombroso who wrote the book "born criminal" failed to prove the existence of such predispositions and the French anthropologist Alexandre Lacassagne proved he was wrong. No psychologist, anthropologist and sociologist go on defending such principles in Europe nowadays. We already know where positivism leads.

I have abused of Minority Reports. Almost only American scientists make such claims nowadays. In Europe, Italian positivist criminologist Cesare Lombroso who wrote the book "born criminal" failed to prove the existence of such predispositions and the French anthropologist Alexandre Lacassagne proved he was wrong. No psychologist, anthropologist and sociologist go on defending such principles in Europe nowadays. We already know where positivism leads.

On this topic, the opinions of geneticists and biologists are more useful than that of psychologists, anthropologists, or sociologists. While I agree that there is no "murder gene" that guarantees that someone will attempt to murder someone, however, it is clear that aspects of mood, behavior, and temperament are influenced by a person's genetics. So clearly genetics plays some part in criminial behavior.

I have abused of Minority Reports. Almost only American scientists make such claims nowadays. In Europe, Italian positivist criminologist Cesare Lombroso who wrote the book "born criminal" failed to prove the existence of such predispositions and the French anthropologist Alexandre Lacassagne proved he was wrong. No psychologist, anthropologist and sociologist go on defending such principles in Europe nowadays. We already know where positivism leads.

On this topic, the opinions of geneticists and biologists are more useful than that of psychologists, anthropologists, or sociologists. While I agree that there is no "murder gene" that guarantees that someone will attempt to murder someone, however, it is clear that aspects of mood, behavior, and temperament are influenced by a person's genetics. So clearly genetics plays some part in criminial behavior.

You speak about behavior, it concerns psychologists, they are even more concerned by this topic than geneticists. The genotype evolves a little during a whole life whereas mood, temperament and behavior are not set in stone. There is no precise study pointing out a precise couple of genes involved in "bad" temperament, it is a very subjective notion. It's a complete philosophical nonsense to try to explain crimes and behavior with the genetics. Genetics explain the transmission of some mental troubles that are known to be hereditary, it does not mean that it is the key to a deep understanding of criminology.

I actually wasn't trying to claim inbuilt predisposition, I was actually just pointing out the silliness of saying "people behave according to human nature" (as opposed to what, giraffe nature?) without actually nailing down one's definition of human nature. But I guess the way I phrased it could have been read that way.

You speak about behavior, it concerns psychologists, they are even more concerned by this topic than geneticists.

Behavior concerns psychologists but we were talking about innate behavior and whether people are predisposed towards certain behaviors. This is the realm of genetics (and perhaps evolutionary biologists) as the predisposition is

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The genotype evolves a little during a whole life whereas mood, temperament and behavior are not set in stone. There is no precise study pointing out a precise couple of genes involved in "bad" temperament, it is a very subjective notion. It's a complete philosophical nonsense to try to explain crimes and behavior with the genetics.

It certainly is not nonsense and there is active research in this area. Again, no one is claiming that a single gene will absolutely determine that someone will commit a specific type of crime. It is an issue of being statistically more likely/less likely.

Genetics explain the transmission of some mental troubles that are known to be hereditary, it does not mean that it is the key to a deep understanding of criminology.

No one said it was key to a deep understanding of criminology, but it can help understand the extent to which people are pre-disposed towards criminal behavior which have implications for early detection, ethics, treatment, punishment, etc.

Quote from: sproingie

I actually wasn't trying to claim inbuilt predisposition, I was actually just pointing out the silliness of saying "people behave according to human nature" (as opposed to what, giraffe nature?) without actually nailing down one's definition of human nature. But I guess the way I phrased it could have been read that way.

Genetics altering how a person behaves? Even statistically it will probably be close to nothing. People's actions has a lot more to do with environment and social background.

There are some genetic traits that do pass along to social. Like, it is easier for a native Chinese person to learn Chinese than any other race because their brains (and mouths) are hard wired to do so. Genetics even separated the gender of males and females making males a bit stronger and their arms more accurate, and made females better at multi-tasking and communication.

Even with those previous extreme genetic examples, a person will have to be completely separated from the world in order to act with those traits. Psychology is very deeply influenced by society and the people you live around (environment). Depending on your influence, that is where most of these violent traits come from.

IMHO, it is a mere coincidence that people in jail have similar genetic traits. There is so many factors that contribute to people doing violent actions. In other words, there is absolutely no way you can single out one genetic trait that will create/ contribute to a particular behavior. One will have to look at all the environmental factors, and you'll probably find that they have a much bigger role than any single trait.

Think about it, just because boys are strong doesn't mean we all have to wrestle bears, hunt food, or fight wars. Our genetic traits build us for a specific task, but they do not shape our decisions. They just make us better for performing the task. It is the influence of our environment that constitutes what we do with our traits. The people we meet, the place we live in, and what we interact with all affects the psychology.

There is a definite split between both ends. Genetics might build you better for a task, but psychology factors will determine whether that task is done. (Making statistics about it rather useless...)

1. Criminality is influenced (among other things) by temperament2. Temperament is influenced (among other things) by genetics.

Both of these have ample scientific support. It reasonably follows that genetics does play some role in criminality. What current research is uncovering is (1) more specifically what genes may be involved and (2) the extent of the correlation.

No one is saying:

1. Genetics is the main/only determining factor in whether someone will commit crime.Environment clearly plays a huge role but that doesn't mean that genetics doesn't play a role. Just because two people growing up in very similar environments may have vastly different outcomes, doesn't mean environment doesn't play any role the same is true for genetics.

Well, I'd drop the "criminality" bit and say that there are without question physiological factors which can influence behavior and/or personality traits. This will make people uncomfortable for a number of reasons, such as a knee-jerk reaction to the policies of some not-to-be-named socialist party government in the 1930s-40s. (I mentioned the war, but I don't think they noticed). And people love the notion of "free-will". Nobody wasn't there to hard to control (or uncontrollable) demons inside of ourselves or others. But we know that so-called chemical imbalances when untreated or untreatable can cause behavioral changes (to put it mildly). Above normal levels of testosterone and aggression? That seems to go back and forth...cause you know, correlation doesn't mean causation makes all of these kinds of things tricky, but I've the impression that mainstream thinking is yes, there is a correlation.

Back to the "root" of this derail-of-a-derail-of-a-derail. I would say that self-interest and increasing self-worth are a fundamental parts of human nature. And that these are what drives us to both very positive and very negative things.

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